Tag Archives: Lost in Space

It sounds like science fiction, but in fact NASA is working on a real-life warp drive. Theoretically, with this technology we could achieve interstellar travel with effective speeds of 10c! We would be able to travel to nearby stars and the planets that surround them all within a human lifetime. The possibilities are just endless. It fills me with such terrible hope for the future of humanity that we will be able to escape the womb of mother Earth and finally reach the stars! What wondrous opportunities for humanity will this herald?

Simultaneously I am filled with equal amounts of trepidation, for what terrible dangers will we discover? Aggressive species? Unforeseen space phenomena? Technical difficulties that lead to us being lost in space? Unknown killer viruses from alien worlds?

Perhaps we will discover less-advanced species nearby and instead of following our own history and taking advantage of them, we will, like the Vulcans in Star Trek, merely send something like a Vulcan Survey Ship to observe and perhaps help them on their way to the stars.

I’ve grown to enjoy a lot of Star Trek: Voyager in the years since it aired its last episode. One thing I have not grown to love is the Kazon, or Neelix. Before I digress too much in a discussion of anthropomorphic porcupines and their mindless cheerfulness, let’s look at the Kazon. Every species in Star Trek serves as a foil for some aspect of humanity, whether it be the honor-bound Klingons, the cunning Cardassians, or deceptive Romulans. Unlike those three well-documented species, the Kazon just don’t seem to capture my attention. Perhaps they needed more airtime on Voyager to be further fleshed out (though I know many Trek fans that would say they received too much air time), or perhaps they needed to be unique.

That’s the problem though, they aren’t unique, in my mind they’ve always come off as cheap knockoffs, the Delta Quadrant’s Klingons, who do what Klingons do, except not as well. Perhaps it’s not entirely the fault of the Kazons themselves, and perhaps it’s the whole Voyager series. Let me clarify. What I mean is that the very premise of Star Trek: Voyager is one that runs contrary to the spirit of Star Trek. To me, Star Trek is all about humanity journeying out to the stars, stepping away from our cradle Earth and discovering new life while simultaneously discovering more about ourselves in the process, and thus learning and improving ourselves through contact with those diverse cultures. Voyager seems to have this completely in the reverse, it’s a starship far away from home and spends the entire 7 seasons of its episodic run finding a way home. It’s a knockoff of Lost in Space, Star Trek’s version of Lost in Space, doing what Lost in Space did, except not as well because Voyager gets unlost by actually finding Earth. Ah well, there was always the Doctor.